The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1887-09-28
HOUSE or HOME.
WIS the Simpson Family Did
MOI Like Their New Quarters.

MOI Like Ine1r n eW quarters.
Tie Simpsons were moving.
They had rather fallen into the
hal3 it was easier tomove than to
elean house. And as the place they
lived in was always owned by some-
ibodS else, they had no particular
interest in staying there.
G had its advantages, this annual
fitting; but there were also numer-
ous Disadvantages, too, if one stop
ped to reckon them up.
Mr. Simpson had no time to do
this. He was too busy earning the
money to pay rent to grasping land
lords.
Mfs. Simpson had no inclination.
She thought of the places on the
walls whore the heads of the family,
were photographed, of the smoky
ths- ash keaps ia the back.
yard. She wanted to cutloose from
all these disagreeable associations.
Mr.. Simpson let her have her own
way; he merely remarked paren-
thetically that the children would
be soon like the farmers hens. He
had moved so often that whenever
they saw white canvas covered
wagon cross the prairie they laid
down and held up their feet to be
tied.
The disadvantage was in tearing
up things that had taken root. The
chairs and sofas, the stoves, the pic
lures and piano had all adjusted
themselves, hoping they had come
to stay. Like the tabled mandrake
of classic lore, they shriel<ed with
pain when torn up from their native
soil
1t was rather awkward for Mrs.
Simpson to go around explaining to
her friends that she had moved
again. 1t gave her the feeling of
being sort of peripatetic show.
But she expatiated upon the supe-
rior draining and advanced school
privileges of the new quarters, and
so built new road to her Rome.
But this time it was harder than
ever to move, because
well-the baby was gonel She had
died in that house-tho little Ada,
the sweet year old baby-and Mrs.
Simpson had said that was why she
wanted to move. She could not
bear to stay where everything re-
minded her of her lost darling. But
she realized before sheleft the house
that she had made mistake.
The very walls were magnetized
with the sweet presence. And if
the cry pain still fingered in the
silence was it not offset by the mer-
ry, babling laughter, the patter,
patter of her tiny, musical feet, the
Joyous bird call OF the vanished
baby?
There We're her little finger marks
on the doors-the tracks of her
small feet on the threshold-the
very spot on the wall where she
had braced her small, defiant head
so many times when she would not
coma at mammals caU
And some one had marked there
with pencil date, with the words,
"Ada-sohigh."
She had grown higher now. BY
no earthly measure could they reach
her angel stature.
Ever since the days when it was
recorded in Holy Writ, "And a
little child shall lead them, children
have been wise and sweet adj
justers. Sometimes they straighten
out some entangled skein by living,
sometimes by dying.
And this brings me again to the
moving and the reason why the
Simpsons will not move this spring,
nor next spring, nor any other
spring, please God, until they go
into the house not made with hands.
They had moved and were all in
heaps in the new house, which was
nobody's home.
The distracted furniture stood
around on one leg and shrieked
whenever it was touched. The
stoves were down and refused to go
up. The carpets were mis-fts and
contracted themselves out of shape.
Everything else went and got lost.
Mrs. Simpson was nearly distracted.
Mr.. Simpson had his hat on side
ways; his face was red and his
voice keyed way up.
The the little army of children
came in, and sat down on the car
pets and began to cry in unison.
"We want to go homel We
want to go homel"